Pointers to the formless: PARADOX

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Language can be so limiting. Words can point to truth, arise from within truth but don’t contain truth. Truth can’t be contained. Truth won’t fit into a concept. The formless, limitless divine reality is beyond the limits of form but is ever-present in the forms that arise from the formless.

The mind/body desperately desires to understand all that there is so it can try to control all that there is. The basic survival instinct of the human form is the motivation of the mind to know the cause so it won’t be surprised by the effect. As a hunter/gatherer, we need to predict the outcome of the next moment to bring basic needs to the body. This desire is neither good or bad, it just IS.

The mind attempts to go deeper and deeper looking for the indivisible root cause. It believes there is always a singular truth to any circumstance. It creates an absolute paradigm of “good” and “bad” so it can manipulate the next moment to bring only “good” and exclude the “bad.” Seeking truth from this perspective will bring us to truth but it is an indirect path. We look through our electron microscopes to discover the indivisible and the root cause that we believe will allow us to predict every moment, but what we find is randomness. The indivisible doesn’t exist. Cause and effect don’t work. We even create concepts to describe what we can’t understand like quantum and relativity. The indirect path brings us to paradox.

The direct path is paradox. When we follow the pointers to truth, we find the end of our minds. Paradox takes us beyond our minds where truth can be experienced for what it IS. We can take the long way around the mountain by the path of the mind or take the shortcut through paradox.

It’s day one of your Philosophy 101 class. The professor asks the proverbial question “Is the chair you are sitting on real or not?” The class begins. The search for reality is underway. The mind is engaged. We ponder the chair with our electron microscope as we go deeper and deeper. We discover the chair isn’t what we think it is. It is energy that appears as a chair. It isn’t even a chair until we call it a chair. We create a concept called a chair to fit the chair into our cause and effect world. The students are intrigued or perplexed. The professor has achieved his goal. The students are “thinking” about reality and Philosophy is born.

The truth of ultimate reality not found in the chair or the class or the professor or even the mind. The exercise is just a circumstance that can be experienced by the awareness that we are. The human form, wrestling with the concepts of form, is the expression of awareness that is waking up to the formless. Just beyond the limits of the mind are the answers. The exercise is a means to an end. There is a paradox in the exercise. The chair is real and it is not. The professor is an individual and is also the awareness from which arises all things. The students appear as individuals but are really manifestations of the ONE. When we embrace the paradox and surrender to “not knowing”, we go beyond the mind into the experience of reality.

No matter the path we take, we find the chasm of paradox awaiting. Our minds are perplexed. We have so many questions…”Why is there evil in the world?” “Why do bad things happen to good people?” “Why does a child die?” “Why are there hungry people?” The list goes on and on. We can expend so much effort trying to dissect the issues to discover a root cause. We can create religions and organizations and structures and so much more in an attempt to control the next moment. In the end we still find paradox. The perceived world is what it IS. OR…we can embrace the paradox and go beyond our minds.

This is what Jesus was pointing us to. When Jesus said “love” he was telling us that the bridge across the chasm of paradox is the unconditional acceptance of all things. He said we must lose our lives to gain life. He said we had to die to live. He said to pray for our enemies, love our neighbor, do not judge and turn the other cheek. All of these pointers were bringing us to the end of the mind to discover truth. The truth is through the narrow gate of paradox.

If we rest (another Jesus pointer) we can surrender to the paradox. We can go beyond the limits of the mind. This is where “death has no sting” and we find “eternal life.” Living beyond the limited self is experiencing the kingdom of heaven. We discover that “good” and “bad” are just colors of the same thing. “It hurts so good” is reality. “Pain” brings “joy.” Concepts no longer control us. Categorizing is not required. Living the eternal life is why we are here in this form to experience the formless as a form.

True freedom is discovered as the ever-present unconditional acceptance of all things…LOVE. We embrace the paradox of what IS and surrender to the “not knowing” that brings us beyond the limits of form. It is incredibly liberating to let go of “needing to know.” It is a wonderful experience to let form be form. As the immortal self, the one divine consciousness, we get to experience this life. In reality we aren’t using an electron microscope to discover the root cause but we are the electron microscope seeing ONENESS from the inside out. Now that is a paradox.

Mel Wild: In My Father's House

I asked the question last time about whether theism or atheism is delusional. Now, I would like to look at a common myth propagated by anti-theists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens that asserts that faith in God is dangerous to society. This is simply not borne out in reality.

“Faith in God certainly is a delusion, if God does not exist. But what if God does exist? Then atheism is the delusion. So the real question to ask is: does God exist? Many atheists (inspired by Sigmund Freud, who himself thought that faith in God is an illusion) claim that they have a very […]